List of languages of the North Sea

This is a list of the languages spoken on the shores of the North Sea. All living ones are Germanic.

North Germanic languages

The following languages are either extinct, or no longer used on the North Sea coast

Old Norse (North Germanic). This evolved into the modern North Germanic languages off which most except for Norn still survive.
- Norn language. This was spoken in the Orkney and Shetland islands but was replaced by English/Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries. The last speaker died in the 19th century.
Pictish language (Celtic). This was spoken in what's now Scotland in the early Middle Ages by a people called the Picts. It was replaced by Scottish Gaelic and Old Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Scottish Gaelic language (Celtic) After it replaced pictish, it was spoken all over Scotland, where it was the national language. It was replaced by English/Scots in the lowlands from the High Middle Ages but until recently it was spoken on the north sea coast of the Highlands, from Nairn to John O' Groats. With the Highland Clearances of the early 19th century and due to other factors, it lost ground to English in those areas. Although a few speakers of those dialects of Gaelic remain as of the early 21st century, they are among the elderly and Gaelic is no longer the predominant language of anywhere on the north sea coast. Attempts are being made to revive it.
Old Brythonic language (Celtic) was spoken in Britain in the Iron Age, the Roman Era and the Sub-Roman Period. It was replaced by the Germanic dialects of the Anglo-Saxon invaders that would later be Old English.